Our guild’s annual challenge quilts are due in November. I’m getting ready to start on mine. Yes, I know it’s almost October. The topic is announced in February and I’m often not sure what I’m doing until late October. Not that I haven’t been thinking about it, I have. I think of it ALL THE TIME once the topic is announced…collect zillions of ideas, plan several carefully, pin images to a secret Pinterest board, select some fabrics, draw some sketches, maybe even start a few projects that end up scrapped. But the serious work of making that quilt is often a last minute thing.
This year’s challenge is to make a quilt that reflects some aspect of one’s childhood. The memory of being a little girl. So many fun images come to mind…easy things to piece, like a hopscotch grid. Some ideas are more difficult to depict in cloth. But the fun is in remembering and in making an image of that memory.
One member of guild made her Little Girl quilt really early…as soon as the idea went out. But she couldn’t keep the secret. She took it for Show and Tell in the spring of this year and resigned herself to making another one as the November meeting approached. That may be my issue, too….the inability to keep a secret. Maybe that’s why I don’t start earlier.
I have dozens of ideas for my Little Girl challenge…but one keeps nagging me. The hardest to implement in fabric is the one I can’t stop thinking about….of course. It’s a secret, so I can’t reveal more now…
One of my earlier challenge quilts was little-girl themed. in 2010, the challenge title was Bushels of Baskets. Though I love basket quilts and have made plenty of those, I chose in 2010 to do something different…I made this doll, Annie Ruth, and let her hold a sweet little handmade basket I had bought at a local craft fair. She still oversees the activities in my sewing room. Perhaps she will inspire brave new Little Girl ideas in the next few weeks.
You know I love to make quilt labels that extend the interest from the front of the quilt to the back. But a label doesn’t have to be a separate design element. On Annie Ruth, I just wrote the pertinent information on her backside.
As this year’s challenge leader, I have other duties – making appropriate winner’s ribbons and prizes – so I have lots of opportunities to express my Little Girl ideas. I’ve been working on those ribbons and having a blast doing it!
